


Whiskey In Mind

by sian1359



Category: Justified, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: A Ficathon Walks Into A Bar Challenge, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 04:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/857694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/pseuds/sian1359
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raylan Givens walks into a bar in Colorado Springs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whiskey In Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Elmore Leonard's writing style is definitely not mine; you get a mash-up here for what it's worth.
> 
> Title from a song by Kane

Raylan didn't know Colorado Springs. He didn't know Colorado, either. Or, really, too much of the states west of the Mississippi. No, Raylan Givens was a bluegrass boy, born in Kentucky coal country although he'd gotten out when he could. Before he'd left, he'd put in his time crawling around the dark of the earth, down in some of those deep shafts, figuring he'd go out like those in the columns of names on the memorial plaque, buried where he worked. Or, slowly like the rest of the men in his family, from breathing the coal dust in.

He had got out, and now he crawled instead through the underbellies of the cities and out amongst the back roads. He was a deputy US Marshal, hunting other men for a living. He reckoned his death, now, would come on the wings of a bullet. He wouldn't live long enough to just sit on his ass like his old man. Raylan was okay with that. As long as he had the time to work through a few of the names on his own bullets.

For not knowing Colorado or its local places, Raylan still did know two important things. He knew his fugitive, not this Angel Kingman directly, but he knew the type. Born and raised in the shadow of his own mines and mountains, Kingman had gone off to make good. And when nothing had gone his way, when the law started in after him, he'd run for home. Back to the only place he'd been someone, whether it was the star football player or simply the biggest guy in his group of friends. Back to where the world was still open ahead of him in possibilities as well as forgiving in his failures.  Although, now, Kingman would likely only really find that in the bottom of his glass.

Which was the second thing Raylan knew. His liquor. How to brew it, how to drink it, and how to find it. For a loser like Angel Kingman, he'd want a place where the regulars sat down at ten in the morning, each nursing their own shattered dreams and finding companionship in the anonymity.  A place that knew the different between Tennessee Rye and Kentucky Bourbon and kept Waylon and Johnny on the jukebox, along with a bottle of Maker's Mark on the top shelf.  

Raylan was standing before one of those places now, the third he'd checked in the day, this one close enough for the military boys to have a busy weekend and far enough away from the college kids to find for a hangout, except for those looking for trouble.  It was midday, just going on two, with any kind of lunch crowd gone and too early for the night owls. Walking inside, Raylan gave his eyes a few seconds to adjust to coming in out of the sunlight.

Beyond the bartender and a single waitress to handle the tables, Raylan counted seven other people inside. Two regulars who no doubt had their own reserved barstools down at the back end of the bar, a couple who looked like they'd come in separate but were finishing negotiations to leave together, a lone woman sitting at the other end of the bar, and two single guys. One of which was his fugitive, Angelo "Angel" Corvallis Kingman, convicted for interstate trafficking, tax fraud, failure to surrender, and bail jumping.  Kingman looked sketchy sitting there, well on his way to getting drunk, but Raylan's gaze got caught by the woman. And the other single guy now hitting on the woman and looking like he wasn't going to take no for an answer.

At first look, she reminded Raylan of Winona. A warm kind of honey blonde, soft in expression and appearance, but look she fastened on the guy showed she wouldn't take shit from anyone. Especially not some two-bit, drunken hick. It was the air about her, though, seeing her sitting at a bar at two in the afternoon, alone but seeking some sort of solace or relief, that most brought to mind Winona. Raylan's ex had done that during the weeks preceding their divorce, leaving Raylan feeling guilty when he came upon her like that, although Winona had also found satisfaction in telling all of her friends all of Raylan's failings to sit alone very often.  

Just as Raylan gave himself a shake for his mooning over Winona and he started moving in toward Kingman, he heard a shout and then the distinctive sound of flesh hitting flesh. He turned, despite knowing this would likely cost him his quarry, but he'd been brought up in a culture where women were too often their husbands' punching bags and him being unable to do anything then for him to turn his back on it now.

Only to find that not Winona had been the one to throw the punch. Well-deserved by the look of it, however, given the obvious wet patch across her shirt in the shape of a hand at breast level. The guy was just drunk enough to have thought he could get away with it but no drunk enough to not take offense.  He came up cussing and swinging, giving Raylan little choice but to step into the wild swing and stop it from connecting.

It was easy enough to clamp his fingers around the guy's wrist, a little harder to just hold it there since the guy outweighed him by maybe forty pounds and had a couple inches on him, but Raylan gave a squeeze and just the barest of twist in his own wrist to dig into a nerve ending and have the guy howling this time as he was dropped to his knees from the pain. The guy tried a half-assed punch aimed to take out Raylan's knee, so this time Raylan twisted away just enough for it to brush instead of hit him, while pulling up on the guy's trapped arm and clamping his other hand to the same shoulder.

Raylan told him, mouth to ear as he leaned forward with enough torque that if the guy did try to move very much, he'd end up with a dislocated shoulder if not also an elbow, "Another fool move like that and they'll be taking you out in handcuffs and an ambulance. Do you understand?"

He got a shaky nod.

Raylan continued, "Now, when I let you up, you're going to apologize to the lady and then the bartender, hand over your keys, then you're going to get your ass out the door. I'll settle up your bar bill if you have one and you can call a cab from the street."

The drunk apparently wore wounded pride like a jacket, because now he began to protest, "You don't have no call to – "

The bartender called out, "I see a badge and a gun, Miller," while Raylan tried not to cringe from being so identified. "I'd do as he says and consider yourself lucky. I also suggest you don't come back in for a few days. Let's say ten or I'll be forced to throw you out myself."

Sure enough, Kingman started to bolt the instant he heard the word badge. Raylan didn't want to clear his gun with so many people in a possible field of fire. He didn't want Kingman getting away either, however. The solution came to him as he was 'assisting' Miller up. He figured the drunk wasn't about to apologize anyway, so this time he assisted him toward the door with a push. That had Miller careening into Kingman and the both of them staggering. In the moment it took Kingman to regain his balance, Raylan moved to get between him and the door, pulling his hand cuffs from the back of his belt. He ignored Miller's lurch through the door. As well as all of the other eyes still fixed on him.

Instead, he said, "Angelo Kingman, I am deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens. You are under arrest as a fugitive from justice in addition to the rest of the crimes you have already been convicted of. And I am pissed off enough that if you try to run again, I will simply shoot you and save the taxpayers the money from hauling your ass back to Kentucky along with the expense of another trial."

Kingman, in perhaps the first smart thing he'd done in years, didn't try anything and, instead, put his hands out. He allowed Raylan to cuff him and then let himself be patted down before being led back to a barstool. He took the seat again without protest, nodded as Raylan quickly read him his rights, and agreed to stay put so that Raylan could turn his attention back to check on the blonde with the core of steel and a noteworthy right hook.

Raylan asked her, "Are you okay, ma'am?"

She nodded. The smile on her face and the way her eyes tracked to the Stetson that hadn't moved despite his dodging and leaning, said she was more amused than shaken up. That she was no stranger to either danger or violence, but then her reaction to the assault had already said as much. Raylan supposed he shouldn't have just let Miller go in case she wanted to file charges, but then the bartender's response implied he'd knew more than just the guy's name, so something undoubtedly could be arranged.

She then said, "I'm fine, deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens.  I appreciate the assist, but you didn't have to chance losing your man. I can take care of myself."

Despite her standing no more than five and a half feet, Raylan nodded and gave her a tip of his hat as he said, "I believe you, ma'am. Where I come from, however, a lady shouldn't have to. My mama, were she still alive, would like to tan my hide for just standing by in seeing what happened to you."

She gave a harder look to his hat, then offered a more amused smile as she said, "Well, back in Wisconsin, Marshal Givens, my daddy would whoop my _ass_ if I couldn't stand up for myself. Not to mention so would the guys that I work with. But it is nice to find a gentleman in a place like this so, again, I thank you. My name is Jennifer Keller and I'd buy you a drink if you didn't have to worry about your fugitive."

Raylan said, "Him?" with a nod of his head toward Kingman. "Angel won't be a worry. You're not in such a rush to get back to Kentucky that you'd begrudge a man the opportunity to have a drink with a beautiful woman, right?"

While Kingman's sour expression could have been for his current feelings against Raylan, or just for what awaited him in Kentucky as Raylan had implied, Kingman shook his head and gestured toward the two of them and then the bar with his cuffed hands. He added, "I wouldn't mind one last drink to go myself, if you're pouring, deputy."

Raylan felt gracious enough to reward Kingman's cooperation, and mean spirited enough for the overall trouble to remind Kingman who was who, here. He asked, "You a cola or lemon-lime man, Angel?"

The look of dismay Kingman offered went a long way to soothing Raylan's temper, as did the twinkle in Ms. Keller's eye. Kingman opened his mouth to voice an obvious protest, but then seemed to collapse a little into himself and slump further in his seat with a shrug. He said, "Coke, please," in the end to the amused bartender.

The bartender waited until Raylan gave his nod, then he walked over from where he'd been calming the other patrons and filled a glass from the well. After setting the cola down before Kingman, he continued over to get their orders. Raylan turned far enough to give Ms. Keller his attention and a gesture to go first, but not so far that he couldn't still keep Kingman in his periphery, since he'd just given the guy a weapon in the glass if he was so inclined to keep his freedom by going contrary and violent which, so far, had never been the case. Just slick and slippery.

Ms. Keller shook her head and said, "No, Marshal – "

Raylan interrupted, "Raylan."

She stopped, the twinkle in her eyes getting brighter and animating her whole face. Then nodded and acknowledged, "Raylan. Anyways, I'm buying so you should go first. Being from Kentucky, I imagine you know and like your bourbon? I have a friend who was from Scotland. He once explained the differences between whiskey, scotch, and bourbon to me and I happen to know this place serves a fine Parker's Heritage that he liked when we were down from the Mountain."

While that phrasing would mean something else entirely back home, Raylan took the Mountain in this context to mean Cheyenne Mountain, which could indeed explain the ass-kicking guys she worked with comment, given all the governmental and military types working there. He also reckoned the tense changes from have to was to liked with her friend from Scotland meant that he'd passed somewhat recently, maybe not so recently that she was here drowning her spirit to match her grief but still close enough that she didn't always catch herself remembering he was gone. Raylan certainly knew that feeling, and thought choosing a drink to honor someone's memory had better merit to it than Just because Raylan was feeling a little thirsty.

He said, "That sounds fine," so as the far-away look coming into her eyes didn't get any deeper. He also didn't make the mistake of offering to pay despite Parker's being nearer the two hundred dollar range than fifty like a Maker's Mark; she'd schooled him twice on doing for herself and not needing someone's help for him to insult her like that again. "Neat, please."

He then asked, "So, you mentioned the Mountain. Cheyenne, right? You work there?"

She patted at the seat next to the one she'd taken after securing two shots of the Parker's, hers also taken neat with no hint of ice. She said, "I'm a doctor, medical," as if that amendment was necessary, and maybe around here it was.

The military had a lot of types working with them, science as well as medical, Raylan presumed.

 "Under contract with the US Air Force. I ended up replacing my friend who knew his whiskies on a project."

Taking his first sip, Raylan had to agree. "He most certainly did, Ms. Keller." He was doubly impressed when she knocked back her own and didn't even wince; Raylan, having grown up on 'shine, appreciated strong bourbon, which the Parker's definitely would qualify. He was less use to tiny waifs kicking it back, though Ava had always managed. Winona, not so much. But then Winona had left behind as much of Kentucky as she could the first time, and even now tried to hold herself apart despite them both being dragged back home by duty and family.

He held up his glass and toasted, "To absent friends."

She clinked her own and returned his toast with, "Never forget the ones who made you stronger and always respect the ones who stand by you."

They drank.

– finis –


End file.
